Cachet

ARTICLES ABOUT CACHET BY DATE - PAGE 4

No player has been more fun to watch this season than Manny Ramirez. Instead of becoming withdrawn after almost having been shipped to Texas last winter, the Red Sox left fielder seems to have rediscovered how lucky he is to be paid to play a kid's game. Whether diving at top speed inexplicably to cut off a throw from center fielder Johnny Damon or hitting the ball a mile, the guy with the baggy pants always seemed to be smiling. He was the most productive hitter in the American League, leading in homers and third in runs batted in. But that doesn't necessarily make him the Most Valuable Player.

Gardeners may see the name Smith&Hawken -- known as a retailer of high-end, high-quality gardening products -- in more places in coming years because of its sale last week to the much larger Scotts Co., best known for its fertilizers and pesticides. The sale will allow Scotts to expand its share of the $38 million gardening and lawn care market. The "consumables" market that includes Scotts' signature chemicals is worth less than $4 billion a year, said Jim King, director of communications for Scotts.

Investment bankers fresh out of school are getting signing bonuses of $45,000, more than twice as much as last year. Third-year bankers may get 25 percent raises, to $325,000, and managing directors are back up to $1 million a year. Pay for bankers on Wall Street, London and in Tokyo is soaring as demand for securities sales and merger advice leads to record profits for companies such as Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and UBS AG. Fees for investment banking worldwide this year may rise 19 percent, to $47.3 billion, according to Mercer Oliver Wyman, a New York-based consultancy.

In the mid-'80s, cellular phones were a dubious status symbol. They were costly to use and as unwieldy as cinder blocks, which made them impractical for most people. Today, there are more than 140 million wireless phone subscribers in the U.S., and economies of scale have turned the cell phone into a common household tool. Now, some mobile phone-makers seek to regain exclusivity with new high-end phones. "People who wear custom-tailored suits and drive Rolls-Royces were tired of pulling a cheap plastic phone out of their pockets," said Nigel Litchfield, chief executive of Vertu, a luxury phone company spun off from Nokia last year.

Music has felt the surf influence, too. His cut on the soundtrack of the 1994's "Pulp Fiction" reignited interest in Dick Dale, king of the surf guitar, who has since toured the world in his own endless summer. "There are more surf bands," says Buddy Luv Goo, guitarist for the Philadelphia band the Sharkskins, who have opened for Dale. "It's a little edgier than the lounge thing." Hawaii native Jack Johnson, who sang on G. Love's 1999 "Philadelphonic," is enjoying critical success for his current CD, "On and On."

The Texas Longhorns didn't win the Big 12 tournament. They didn't win the Big 12 regular-season championship. But they still earned a No. 1 seed in the South Regional, with the third and fourth rounds in San Antonio, 77 miles from campus. The Longhorns drew a far more favorable placement than Kansas, which finished ahead of the 'Horns in the Big 12 standings and advanced farther in the Big 12 tournament--which was played in Dallas, the heart of 'Horn country. Kansas beat Texas in the teams' only head-to-head matchup.

A decade or more ago, when this space was more frequently devoted to the thrilling entertainments of the social set, I found myself in a certain large Midwestern city, reporting the thrilling arrivals of stuffy rich people at the local opera's opening night. At one point, a very expensive car hove to, depositing on the red carpet a distinguished-looking older man, and then his wife, a younger woman distinguished mostly by such paucity of cloth you'd have thought her a fading movie star trying to get the photographers' attention on Oscar night.

The stock market is expanding, collective farming is dead and Wal-Mart has arrived. It wouldn't sound like a very good time to be a young Chinese communist. Chen Chong Yong, a 21-year-old party leader at Wuhan University, reached under the desk in his dorm room to show off a stack of membership applications. There were two dozen large brown envelopes. More than half his law school class wants into the Communist Party, he said with pride. It is one of many contradictions about modern China that communism, as outdated as it sounds, still has cachet among young intellectuals, who happily spout Marxist doctrine while preparing for careers in an economy now driven by the capitalist tools of private enterprise, foreign corporate investment and global trade.

There's no shortage of former big-league managers looking for work. There's Buddy Bell and Jerry Narron, Terry Francona and Jim Fregosi, to name a few. But in searching for the next manager of the Cubs, Jim Hendry appears more likely to hire an unproven up-and-comer than a so-called retread. Hendry, a rookie general manager himself, ranks big-league managing experience somewhat low on his list of desirable qualities. "It depends on the man," he said Sunday. The Los Angeles Dodgers' "Jim Tracy was managing this year for the first time, and Tony La Russa and Jim Leyland had a first time.

There are those who would complain that, as it approaches its 150th anniversary, Marshall Field's just ain't what it used to be--and they would be right. Certainly, a doorman no longer greets shoppers by name at the Washington Street entrance. Gone is the ladies lounge with fainting couches and writing desks, as is the staff of millinery designers, saddle workers, silversmiths, engravers, painting restorers, upholsterers, toy makers, bookbinders, watchmakers, gemsetters and gunsmiths--on the premises.